Silver Lining

For every crappy thing that happens there is usually a silver lining
I always keep in my mind that I can find some positives in the nastiness that is an MS.  so here is a  partial list of things that are included in my silver lining. 

We have a cleaning lady comes every other week.  This is something that is not a luxury item for me.  I am honestly unable to do things like vacuum the entire house or scrub out the bathtub.  So while I believe that everyone deserves to have a cleaning service if they want it, I can rationalize it as a necessary expense.  Now if I could just make myself  declutter, my house would actually look fairly decent!
When I travel by airplane, I don't have to walk all the way to my terminal.  I don't know you've ever been to O'Hare airport, but it is pretty big. If my terminal is at the opposite end of the airport, I am looking at having to crawl the last  half of the trip.  So when I fly, I request a wheelchair.  And then I am pushed through the terminal usually by an over-eager teenager.  I don't have to stand in line in order to pass through security,either When Eli was little, they let him go through a special security checkpoint, too, so he didn't have to wait in those long lines.  Usually the person who is pushing me is very good at dodging and weaving through the crowds.  It is like some twisted carnival ride, called ram-a-mole or something.  It is a little scary, but still better than having to walk to my gate!

For this next one, if you are a man or your sensibilities are easily offended don't read any further.  Being on heavy duty medication does lots of strange things to your body.  One time I got a perm and it didn't take.  I thought it was the fault of the hairdresser, but then someone told me that all ofthe  medications were probably responsible and that my hair would not accept chemicals anymore.  I think that's a little weird, but I no longer try to make my hair curly.

The other thing that medication has done is thrown me into menopause.
I stopped having periods when I was about 37.  I knew I wasn't pregnant because I knew what that felt like I just wasn't having periods. When I went to the doctor she ran some blood tests and said I was postmenopausal.  Now if I was a very young woman with any possibility of having more children, this would have been fairly upsetting.  But as it was I did a little joyful dance \that I no longer had to do that particular thing.  It's expensive.  It's messy.  It's painful.  And for me it served no purpose.  I was not sad to see it go.
Of course, one of the more positive things has been the parking.  I very rarely have to search for a good spot.  Except for the time at the library that I talked about earlier, I don't think anyone begrudges me the handicapped spaces.  I sometimes worry that people see me and think I should not be in a handicapped space.  I am assuming that they think that I am too young to need that space.  But when they see me walk they realize why I need it.  But probably I need to remember the 16-36-66 rule.
That is:  at age 16 you worry about what everyone thinks about you.  At 36 you don't care what other people think about you.  And at 66 he realized no one was ever thinking about you anyway.  It is most likely that no one even gives a crap about why I am parking in the handicapped parking place.

I will be back tomorrow with more silver lining items.